Cardi B Admitted She Turned Down The Super Bowl Halftime Show With ‘Mixed Feelings’

Cardi B is all over Super Bowl weekend. Yesterday, she performed at the Super Bowl music festival, and today, her Pepsi commercial with Steve Carrell and Lil Jon will air during the game. One place Cardi won’t be seen, though, is on stage during the halftime show. She was invited to join Maroon 5 during their set, but turned down the opportunity in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. Now Cardi has talked more about making that decision, and she admitted that it wasn’t an easy choice to make.

In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Cardi said she had “mixed feelings” about turning down the performance, but felt like she should “stand behind” Kaepernick because he “stood up” for his beliefs.

“I got to sacrifice a lot of money to perform,” she said. “But there’s a man who sacrificed his job for us, so we got to stand behind him.”

She apparently also received some criticism about her Super Bowl festival performance, and she responded to that by saying the gig was her way of sticking it to the NFL:

“I hear people saying like ‘Oh, y’all are saying all this stuff about the Super Bowl, but you’re doing all these parties.’ And it’s like, well, if the NFL could benefit off from us, then I’m going to benefit off y’all. Y’all make the most money off our people. Why am I not going to take advantage of y’all and take money from y’all too? Because of y’all, we are getting these parties. OK, thank you.”

Cardi also said that Offset made the tough decision to not attend the big game: “My husband, he loves football. His kids play football. It’s really hard for him. […] He really wants to go to the Super Bowl, but he can’t go to the Super Bowl, because he’s got to stand for something.”

As for who actually will be at the halftime show, SpongeBob SquarePants could really be among that group.